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An iconic billboard in the quintessential boom city of Shenzhen features Deng’s famous statement that China's “basic line will not waver for 100 years.” If Deng was right, we are less than one-third of the way into the era of “reform and opening.” But four challenges identified by Premier Wen Jiabao in 2010, that growth becomes “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated, or unsustainable,” threaten the boom. The key to balance lies in increasing the consumer share of GDP, allowing China to create a modern consumer economy. Stability will depend on the government's ability to address grievances as the gap between winners and losers widens. Coordination is the great test facing the ruling Communist Party, of whether it can manage the politics of growth without fundamental changes to the system. Sustainability is an issue that has global implications, as citizens of a warming planet watch anxiously to see if China is successful in greening the boom. The fifth great challenge, left out by Premier Wen, may be the external one: whether the world is successful in making room for China.

Almost Everything We've Done Is Illegal

Period: Prospects | The Politics of Growth

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  • Almost Everything We've Done Is Illegal

    Yao Yang

  • Individual, Atomic Sands

    Yoichi Funabashi

  • Economic and Political Reform

    Susan Shirk

  • Boom Cannot Go On Without Political Loosening

    Winston Lord

  • China is Walking A Tightrope

    Lei Bo

  • Chinese People Do Not Want Another Period of Chaos

    Edward Tse

  • China is Like a Raft in Category 5 White Water

    James Fallows

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Meettheexpert

Yao Yang

Professor, China Center for Economic Research, Beijing University

 Yao Yang is a professor of Economics at the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and at the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of CCER and Deputy Dean of NSD in charge of academic affairs, and the editor of the center’s house journal, China Economic Quarterly. His research interests include economic transition and development in China. He has published widely in international and domestic journals in addition to authoring books on institutional economics and economic development in China.

 

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Well, I think, as you said, the corruption issue is very complicated. First, we have to realize, in the last 30 years, almost everything we have done has been illegal in some sense. If we followed our constitution strictly, we wouldn’t have been end up today. For example, we privatized most of our SOEs and, of course, [this was] against our constitution, before the constitution was amended. Of course, after the constitution was amended, then it was made legal. Otherwise, it was illegal. I can point to a lot of examples to show that. But, in terms of corruption, if you look at the government officials’ salaries, they vary tremendously across regions. A government official['s salary] in Xi'an, my hometown, is very low, but if you go to Shanghai, the salary of an ordinary official is very high. You can call that corruption because it’s not in book, at least not in the central government’s book. So, you can say that is corruption. But, on the other hand, it has a lot to do with incentivizing government officials. If you do not pay them enough, they’re going to be even more corrupt. So, in that sense, I think it’s better to institutionalize corruption; if they’re corrupt, you’ve got to institutionalize, make it on the table, make it transparent, so at least people can say, "Hey, you have that much, but you have more, that’s corrupt."

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Cite this Source >>
“Almost Everything We've Done Is Illegal | Yao Yang | Prospects | The China Boom Project.”
The China Boom Project.
The Asia Society Center on US-China Relations.
1 June 2010.
Web.
09 May 2025.
<https://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/period/prospects/33/176>.
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